


A Week of Highly Coincidental Run-Ins

by ionizable



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-27
Updated: 2015-11-27
Packaged: 2018-05-03 13:59:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5293799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ionizable/pseuds/ionizable
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(According to Root.)</p><p>All Shaw wants to do is run her errands in peace. If Root isn't showing up to whisk her away from her mundane life trapped behind a makeup counter, then what good is Root to her? The answer is: No. None. Nil. Go away. (According to Shaw.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Week of Highly Coincidental Run-Ins

**Author's Note:**

> anon prompt:
> 
> "i had an idea of shaw doing like a week of different errands (groceries, haircut, dry cleaning, etc.) and Root is in every place, undercover. its making me laugh, i'd die if i found this on ur Ao3 #ment2b"

**MONDAY**

Sameen Shaw is normally in the habit of cutting her own hair.

Making an appointment, sitting in a chair for an hour, staring at her own reflection, needing to reassure the stylist that yes, she does like the haircut, and no, she’s no unhappy with anything, this is just how her face is – these are all things she hasn’t done since the last time she was taken to a salon, when she was a child.

But, well, for the past few weeks she’s been feeling like it’s been a while since she’s run a normal errand, like normal people who do normal things like paying someone to get a trim. So it was probably just serendipity, she’d thought, when an opening day complimentary trim coupon had floated down to land at her feet around the same time a box of their latest number’s belongings had exploded.

“Serendipity,” she’d thought.

She’s now inclined to revise that to “cruel twist of fate” as she sits stiffly in the chair, eyes boring into the mirror, fixed on the figure behind the reception desk.

The stylist pumps the height increase mechanism on the chair one or two (or ten) times too many so that her feet are now at an unnecessary distance from the ground, and the squeaking noises get the woman at the desk to turn briefly and smirk over at Shaw’s reflection.

Shaw fights the instinct to roll her eyes at Root, settling instead on a decisive glare, daring Root to comment and possibly break her inexplicable cover as a receptionist at a hair salon.

Wisely, Root doesn’t come anywhere near her for the entire duration of Shaw’s haircut, much less look over at her much after that.

So Shaw sits in the chair for another twenty minutes, keeping one eye on the mirror as Root bustles around doing her fake job and paying her no mind, while the other casually roves around her surroundings to estimate exactly how many milliseconds it would take to get to the nearest pair of scissors. Just in case.

Around the twenty-one minute mark, Shaw’s entire attention is captivated by the mirror, when a clattering noise comes from the desk as a pen drops to the floor.

Eyes narrowing in on the tightening of the back of Root’s skirt and the shape of Root’s waistline as she bends to the ground, for a split second, the thought that at least the view isn’t all that bad crosses Shaw’s mind.

Then Root shoots Shaw a coy look over her shoulder as she straightens those impossibly long, sleek legs of hers, adding just the touch of an extra roll to her hips, and Shaw flinches and hurriedly turns her gaze away.

“Ahh!” her stylist cries out, as she nearly chops off an entire three inches by accident when Shaw’s head moves. It would have one hundred percent been Shaw’s fault if the three inches had gotten snipped off, but it’s clear that the woman is a little terrified of Shaw and so Shaw just impatiently gestures for her to wrap things up.

“That’s a good look on you,” Root says politely, when Shaw comes up to her desk afterwards to pay. Or at least, her tone of voice was polite, but Shaw could only describe the arch in her brow and the slow curve at the corner of her mouth as positively suggestive.

“Thanks,” Shaw mutters, eager to pay and get out of there before the urge to blow Root’s cover gets too strong.

“Aren’t you going to leave a tip?” Root asks, voice still cordial but expression now pouty.

“Here’s a tip for you,” Shaw begins, after a moment of brief consideration. Root told her once that she absolutely loved the husk in Shaw’s voice whenever she spoke under her breath like this, and Shaw’s gratified to see a flicker in Root’s eye that seems to corroborate it.

“Yes?” Root’s voice is hushed as well.

“That shade of puce doesn’t really work on you,” Shaw says, a little loudly, gesturing at the uniform.

Root blinks.

Shaw smirks.

“Well, I would be _more_ than happy to take it off for you,” Root murmurs, as she hands Shaw’s (fake) credit card back to her.

The smirk freezes on Shaw’s face.

“Bye, Sameen,” Root manages to say, before Shaw flounces out of the salon without a backwards look at Root.

Outside, she sends up a silent (and futile) prayer that that’s the last she’ll be seeing of Root until Root can come around bringing any amount of gunfire and excitement to the awful, monotonous, chore-filled life of Sameen Grey.

 

**TUESDAY**

“I jinxed it,” is about the only thing Shaw can think to herself, as she stands in front of all _fourteen_ closed cashier lines and the _one_ open checkout lane.

She clutches her grocery basket determinedly, huffs a little, then marches up to Root.

“Hi there,” Root says, from underneath a stupid-looking cap. She’s also wearing a stupid-looking apron thing and a stupid-looking nametag that reads _Betty_.

“Betty,” Shaw grunts, as she unloads the contents of her grocery basket onto the conveyor belt. “That’s a stupid name.”

“I don’t know,” Root says airily, “I rather think Betty Jennings rolls nicely off the tongue.”

After a quick glance over her shoulder to make sure there’s nobody behind her in line, Shaw manages to silently (and quite patiently, too) watch Root scan her items for a whole fifteen seconds before she eventually hisses, “What are you doing here?”

Root just smiles blandly in response. “Do you have a cat?” she comments, as she continues scanning Shaw’s groceries. “Quite a lot of milk for one person.”

Shaw folds her arms and waits for Root to finish commenting. She knows there’s more coming.

“I see you also have a large family to feed,” Root says, looking at the three 3-lb packs of chicken wings coming down the line.

Maybe the franchise owner is secretly a terrorist, Shaw muses hopefully. And maybe they’re using this grocery store—she looks around balefully at the small inner city supermarket—to smuggle things in via the delivery trucks.

“But where are your vegetables?”

Or maybe there’s a number who happens to live on Shaw’s block, and for _whatever_ reason, the Machine decided to get Root to stake them out at the neighbourhood supermarket instead of being _nice_ or _thoughtful_ because it’s just a _machine_ and why _would_ it care if it denied Shaw a chance at livening up the tedium of her day-to-day life with a relevant number?

“Frozen dinners, miss?” Root says, mock disapproval in her voice. “I suppose you have a very exciting and busy life, if you aren’t getting enough time to make your own meals.”

Shaw rolls her eyes. If anything, she has _too much_ time on her hands, and Root fully knows that. She starts tapping her credit card impatiently on the counter.

“Betty” lets the next few items (four packs of bandages, two jugs of bleach, and three antiseptic bottles) pass without comment. Then Shaw remembers what she’d picked up in the aisle after household items, and almost darts out a hand to snatch it away, but it’s too late.

“W—” Root almost begins, before shutting up and scanning the bright orange tube of KY Warming Jelly without another word, but the smug-ass look on her face makes Shaw want to take her credit card and see just how efficient it could be at slic—

“Will you be needing any… assistance with your purchases?”

“No,” Shaw says flatly, gathering up her bags. She makes sure to snatch up the one containing the lube before Root can pick it back up again.

“I finish my shift in ten minutes. That’s quite a lot for one person to carry, I could hel—”

“Goodbye, _Betty_.”

 

**WEDNESDAY**

It’s errands week, apparently, and Shaw has come to a resolution that the next time she gets a choice between safely remaining in her building, or venturing anywhere in her neighbourhood after work, she should definitely just always stay put.

Next time, she thinks grimly, she’ll just wait the twenty-nine thousand hours it would take to use the laundry machines in her building to get all the blood out of her favourite black shirt.

Because _of course_ she’d run into Root at a laundromat.

Why _wouldn’t_ Root be sitting primly in an uncomfortable plastic chair, clacking away at her laptop, taking up residence in the only laundromat within a two-block radius of Shaw’s apartment building?

Shaw stuffs her clothes into the first machine she sees (all her clothes are black anyway so there’s no need to separate them out) and perches on the chair farthest away from Root’s, steadfastly avoiding eye contact but still managing to size Root up.

It looks like Root’s taking a break from whatever disguise of the day the Machine has her in, and the thought crosses Shaw’s mind that at least Root gets a day off every once in a while, too.

“ _At_ _least?_ ” she wonders, and Shaw shakes her head at herself, annoyed at her thoughts for being even slightly _sympathetic_. Eugh.

They sit there in silence for quite some time, with Root still as a statue save for her fingers flying rapidly over her keyboard. Shaw’s eyes flick over every once in a while, sure each time that _this_ time, it was going to be the limit of Root’s surprising record for most-minutes-gone-without-hitting-on-her.

Eventually, Root does close her laptop, and she scoots over to sit next to Shaw, who puts her book down resignedly. “Hi, sweetie.”

Shaw shifts away from Root without saying anything.

Shaw can practically _hear_ Root’s smile. “How would you like to go for a cup of coffee? We can trust the people of New York not to steal our things if we aren’t here to watch them.”

“Pass,” Shaw says, opening up her copy of _A History of the Cartridges of the British Empire_ again, thumbing to where she’d left off at the .577/450 Martini-Henry powder.

“She’ll let us know if there’s anything to worry about,” Root says, leaning in closer.

Shaw turns her chair around so she can’t see Root at all anymore.

They sit there a little longer, before Shaw glances over her shoulder, unnerved by the silence.

She’s not surprised when she sees Root still sitting there, leaning her weight on one hand on the seat of the chair, head tilted slightly the other way, just quietly _watching_ her with a faint smile on her face.

Shaw turns back around.

She reads the specifications for the .577/450 three times before she realizes she’s just been staring at the listed base diameter for the past few seconds without any of it sinking in.

She sighs and turns sideways in her chair a little. “Why are you following me around?”

Root’s mouth quirks a little, but she doesn’t answer the question. “Sometimes She gives me some time off and I like to do the kinds of things everybody else does. Like laundry.”

Shaw’s uncomfortably aware that a similar thought had crossed her mind earlier this week, and that’s why she’d ended up at that stupid hair salon where Root had apparently begun her daily stalking.

Idly, Shaw watches Root’s clothes spin around in th—

“Is that _money_? In your machine? Are you washing bills?”

A noise suspiciously like “ _hee_ ” escapes Root, and she shrugs. “When I, uh, acquired some of it yesterday, it’d been covered in just a little bit of dye.”

“Are you… literally _money laundering_ right now?”

Root shrugs again. “I had some clothes to wash, too. They’re in the next machine.”

Shaw casts her eyes upward, and tries not to dwell on the fact that a small part of her wants to laugh, maybe, a little bit, right now.

“After all, I can only steal so much lingerie before I start amassing too large of a collection and perfectly good panties start going to waste,” Root continues thoughtfully, “ _and_ I happen to know there’s one item in particular that you quite approv—”

Shaw drops her book into her laundry basket with a dull _thud_ and gets up, heading for the exit.

Who cares if her stuff gets stolen. She’ll come back in a few hours and if Root is still there…

Well. She doesn’t know exactly what she’ll do.

But it’s laundry day, and there’s no way in hell she’s going to stick around long enough for Root to guess that she’s wearing her laundry day underwear right now.

 

**THURSDAY**

Shaw’s completely not surprised when she notices, out of the corner of her eye, a tall brunette decked out all in black, when she takes Bear for his daily stroll.

She finds she doesn’t even really mind, as Root joins them on their stroll.

(But that’s largely because Root hasn’t _really_ joined them. They just seem to have happened to be walking in the same direction for a few blocks. Which happens. New York’s grid layout for its streets is highly practical and the second best thing about it after the fact that nobody gives a damn about anyone else, in Shaw’s opinion.)

So Shaw lets them continue with their walk, sort of together, but mostly not. Sometimes they get separated by a crowd, and sometimes Root pulls up just behind them, but the important thing is that Root never actually approaches her and so Shaw could totally pretend Root wasn’t even there if she wanted to.

They pass by a hot dog vendor, and Root sits on the edge of a fountain and checks her phone while Shaw gets something to eat.

Afterwards, Shaw comes and sits down a little farther down along the fountain, just past a family with two small children who are far too loud and far too delighted to make Bear’s acquaintance. Root doesn’t look up from her phone while they’re seated, but after Shaw gets up and starts walking again, Root slips her phone into her pocket and falls into step behind them by about six feet.

Later, they pass by a newsstand, and Shaw idly watches Bear examine a fire hydrant while Root (for whatever reason) purchases a banal celebrity gossip magazine and chats with the vendor. Shaw doesn’t look directly over at Root when she moves on, but she tugs at Bear’s leash to get them moving again once Root tears out a page from the magazine and dumps the rest in a garbage can.

They walk over a bridge a little while after that, after it’s started to get dark. They’re way in the northeast, now, and there’s no one else around save for a few straggling cars trying to get through the city well after rush hour.

It’s just the two of them walking along opposite sides of the bridge over a river. They don’t speak at all, but they know the other is there.

At the end of the bridge, Shaw looks over at Root’s shadow getting cast onto the road, made even longer and taller by the angled setting sun. Her gaze follows the shadow all the way back up to Root herself, only to be met with Root’s own direct gaze.

Shaw looks away, and they keep walking.

Eventually Shaw wonders where it is, exactly, that Root is headed, with that one torn-out page of a magazine in her pocket along with god-knows-what-else. The longer they walk and the farther they get from where they started out, Shaw starts to wonder if maybe Root _wasn’t_ on some sort of errand for the Machine, but maybe she really has just been following Shaw around as she does her own errands this week.

After a cyclist makes a pass at her (“Walking all alone, honey?”), Shaw checks over her shoulder in case he says something to Root too, only to see herself actually alone on the sidewalk. With a bit of a displeased little wrench in her stomach, she realizes that Root had somehow managed to sneak away from Shaw’s watchful eye in the twenty seconds since Shaw had last clocked Root’s figure in the reflection of the store window across the street.

Feeling disgruntled (and disgruntled _because_ she’s feeling disgruntled, because what was she expecting, a kiss on the cheek goodbye or a parting flirtatious note?), Shaw tugs on Bear’s leash a little harder than she means to, and he looks up at her with a baleful expression.

“Sorry, bud,” she says, bending down and scratching behind his ear in apology. “Let’s go home.”

He pants up at her happily, wagging his tail once as if to say, “Finally.”

Shaw straightens up and looks around.

And she stands there for a second, getting her bearings.

How did she end up in this part of town, anyway?

 

**FRIDAY**

Shaw cranes her neck around the ATM, peering beyond the doors into the bank, where she thinks she can see a familiar smile peeking out from inside an office.

“Hey,” the guy in the ATM next to hers says. “What the hell are you doing?”

Abruptly, Shaw realizes that it looks like she’d been trying to peek into the neighbouring ATM.

“Sorry,” she mutters, finishing up her paycheque deposit and grabbing her bank card before heading inside.

Striding right past the reception desk, Shaw steps into Root’s office and impatiently gestures for the customer she’s “working” with to get out.

“Bank emergency.”

Shaw adds her patented glare for good measure.

“No,” Root says, looking startled. “There’s no—”

It’s too late. The woman had taken one look at Shaw’s face and bolted.

Shaw lets the expression on her face relax a bit. She settles into the recently vacated chair.

“So,” she says.

“Hi, Sam,” Root replies evenly. She’s starting to look faintly amused, and Shaw doesn’t like it one bit. “I was just in the middle of a client meeting.”

“What’s going on?” Shaw asks, cutting to the chase.

Root sits back in her chair and adjusts the glasses she’s wearing with an exceedingly nerdy little push of her index finger, considering Shaw sitting across from her with a thoughtful look.

“Sometimes we go weeks without seeing each other, and now I’ve seen you every single day this week,” Shaw says, refusing to break eye contact even though there’s a glint in Root’s eye that either means that Root’s up to no good, or that she needs to clean her glasses every once in a while. “What gives?”

Root gets up and walks behind Shaw to close the door quietly, then comes around to perch on the desk right in front of Shaw. Notes of an unfamiliar perfume—Shaw’s assuming Root managed to get her hands on something she figured a bank employee might wear—drift past.

Shaw slouches back in her chair, refusing to make an obvious effort to crane her neck up just to meet Root’s gaze. Root just smiles down at her, and after a few beats of silence, she says, “It’s been nice spending so much time with you, Sameen.”

“I don’t know if what we’ve been doing can be called spending time together,” Shaw grumbles, looking away and pretending to examine the fake business cards Root’s got carefully arranged on her desk.

Root doesn’t say anything to that at first, so Shaw looks back up at her, and is taken aback because she almost looks… wistful?

“Well,” Root says, starting to bend down towards her. “It’s the best we can do for now.”

Shaw looks away, then abruptly stands up. She needs to get out of here.

Root gets off the desk and stands, too. Leaning around Shaw’s stiff form, she gently rests her hand on the doorknob.

Shaw clears her throat, looking meaningfully at the doorknob, wondering why Root hasn’t already opened the door.

“It better not be like this for long,” she says to fill the silence, then closes her mouth before she starts grumbling about her job any more. As Reese had unfortunately learned last week, there was no closing the floodgates once Shaw got started on her list of grievances about her job.

Root looks a little more like her chipper perky self at that, as if she can read Shaw’s thoughts and saw the track it started taking.

“Don’t worry, sweetie,” she says, before she drops a quick kiss on Shaw’s lips. “I’m sure you’ll be missing these days before too long.”

She opens the door and ushers Shaw out before Shaw has a chance to react to what Root had said (or what she had _done_ ).

Shaw stares at the door as it closes on her face, before turning around and absentmindedly making her way out of the bank.

If there’s a faint smile on her face (which there _isn’t_ , but if there _was_ ), it’s only because it seems as though Root was implying that things were about to start getting shaken up.

That’s all. That’s the only reason Shaw catches herself looking uncharacteristically pleased in the reflection of a window outside.

She’s definitely not smiling.

 

**SATURDAY**

It’s 11:03 p.m., which means it’s second dinner time, which means this is the last time Shaw’s planning on leaving the house for the day. It’s already been an entire day of running various errands around the city without seeing Root once, which, is… refreshing, Shaw supposes. Six straight days in a row of needing to deal with Root? That’s too much for one person to able to handle, and Shaw’s only human.

She absentmindedly considers her phone and laptop for a second, then decides that the Machine would already have a record of her placing a takeout order, so Root would already be able to know where she was planning to be for the next half hour. Just in case she wanted to.

Not that Shaw wanted her to.

Shaw definitely isn’t keeping track of the minutes, but she just happens to know that it’s 11:19 p.m. now, and Shaw can’t see hide nor hair of Root anywhere in this restaurant.

She definitely isn’t musing about whether or not Root gets weekends off, as she starts walking home after picking up her takeout. It just seems so unrealistic, because Root’s missions are her _life_ , not just her job, the way it is for Shaw. Or the way it _was_ , anyway, before her entire life became one long, extended nightmare featuring colourful face goop. (Also, it’s 11:28 p.m. now.)

Shaw’s not even that hungry, because she ate well during her first dinner, so whatever’s happening in the pit of her stomach must be related to Root, because it just seems to keep getting heavier with each passing face that doesn’t turn out to be Root’s.

It’s a nice night, Shaw decides. The air is cool and brisk, and Shaw opts not to take the shortcut through the alley that’ll take her to the back entrance of her building. She could walk all the way around the block. Enjoy the New York night life. (It’s 11:32 p.m.)

Shaw turns the corner, then remembers too late that this side of the street is home to far too many pubs and bars and absolutely no part of this night life is enjoyable. A teenager throws up while sitting on the curb, head between his knees and friends laughing around him, and Shaw gingerly steps further onto the sidewalk and away from the road.

For whatever reason, Shaw finds herself wondering what it is that Root does for fun, aside from having imaginary conversations with her robot god. Shaw is just about to turn onto her street before she catches a glimpse of an answer to the question she didn’t really mean to ask, and continues walking up the main street a bit more.

She slows in front of a few people standing outside a bar, smoking in the cordoned off patio section of the sidewalk.

Root spots her almost immediately, whether because of the Machine in her ear or some sort of innate radar she always seems to have when Shaw’s around, and there’s a familiar expression on her face, unchecked, as she watches Shaw approach. Root’s got a glass of what looks to be a truly cheap and awful beer in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other, although Shaw’s never seen Root actually smoke before.

But then, there’s a lot Shaw hasn’t seen when it comes to Root, and that might be what spurs her to step in close to Root, separated only by the rope sectioning off the patio.

“Got an extra smoke?” Shaw asks casually, pleased when a faint hint of surprise creeps into Root’s expression, before she holds out an unsurprisingly full pack of cigarettes wordlessly.

“And a light?” she asks, almost entirely sure that Root wouldn’t have a lighter on hand and had bummed one off someone else to light the cigarette she keeps flicking to get the ash off, without once actually smoking it.

Root shakes her head, then looks over her shoulder at the group of drunk losers she’d clearly been in the middle of infiltrating.

“Monkey fuck?” Shaw asks, and she grins when Root’s head swings back around in confusion.

Shaw holds up her cigarette to her mouth and motions for Root to do the same, then leans in close and presses the butt of her cig to Root’s lit one.

Root’s eyes are hooded as she stares at Shaw, and Shaw can guess that Root’s probably about one and a half pints deep into whatever foul beer she’s drinking.

Talking to her must be somehow linked to compromising her cover right now, so Root doesn’t actually say anything, but there’s a _tilt_ to her mouth that Shaw recognizes as they draw closer to one another.

They inhale in sync, gazes rising in tandem from the flickers of the cigarette beginning to light.

“Monkey fuck, eh,” Root breathes, and it seems like a laugh is bubbling up from under the surface.

Shaw blows smoke into Root’s face.

Root blinks and turns away from the unpleasant smell, exhaling her own smoke heavily, and notices the group she was with beginning to stamp out their cigarettes and head back inside.

She drops her own cigarette to the ground, barely three-quarters smoked through, makes sure nobody’s watching, then runs her hand gently down Shaw’s arm to rest on her wrist.

“You on your way home?” she asks Shaw quietly.

Shaw nods, casually flicking her own cigarette onto the street now that Root’s companions have left.

Root nods, too, slowly, eyes almost looking luminous under the street lights as they consider each other for a few breaths.

In unison, they turn away from each other, with Root headed back into the bar, and Shaw back down to her street.

She’s going to need to brush her teeth to get that sticky sweet smoker’s breath off her tongue, but it’s 11:47 p.m. now and she’s feeling much better about her prospects for the night as compared to fifteen minutes ago.

It’s a nice night out.

She’s got great food, which seems to somehow still be warm, to look forward to.

And, probably within the next few hours depending on how motivated Root is, she’ll have some pretty good sex to look forward to, too.

 

**SUNDAY**

Root wakes up to the sound of faint clanging and bustling in the kitchen. Shuffling out wearing one of Shaw’s larger shirts and nothing else, she leans against the doorway and yawns as she watches Shaw cleaning up from making breakfast.

“Fancy seeing you here,” Shaw says dryly, without turning around.

“Oh, my,” Root says, playing along. “We’ve been running into each other quite a lot recently, haven’t we?”

Shaw laughs a little, plating some food for Root, and Root shuffles over to the table with an unchecked smile on her face.

They sit across from each other and eat. It feels like a cloudy, lazy Sunday, with not much light streaming in through the blinds over the window, and neither Shaw nor Root feel the need to talk as they eat.

When Root gets up to do the dishes, she waits for Shaw to shovel the rest of her food into her mouth in one go before handing over her own dirty plate.

“I’m going to take a shower,” Shaw announces casually, a few minutes later, after Root’s done with the dishes and Shaw’s done tidying up the rest of the kitchen. She shoots Root a sideways look.

“Have fun,” Root replies from her prone position on Shaw’s couch with her laptop balanced on her bare knees. She doesn’t look up from her computer, but she does unwrap a candy and leaves the candy wrapper strewn amongst several others on the ground.

Wondering briefly if Root is still going to be there when she comes out, Shaw just shakes her head and heads into the bathroom. She leaves the door open.

Later, as Shaw becomes peripherally aware of knocking assorted toiletries onto the ground as she hoists herself up against the towel bar and the mirror, Shaw will come to realize that she’s beginning to associate any time spent with Root, with needing to first either run an errand or do a chore.

Or, as in this specific case, she’ll note the chore she’ll need to come back to later after Root is done propping her up on the sink counter with her shoulders, head buried between Shaw’s thighs and hands wrapped around her waist.

And Shaw will thread her hands through Root’s hair, keeping it brushed away so that she can watch Root’s long, long lashes against her cheek as she closes her eyes and nips and licks away while her fingers drive Shaw to near incoherency.

Shaw will distractedly (but sternly) chastise herself for leaving handprint smudges on the bathroom mirror that she’ll need to wipe away lest she see them every time she comes out of a foggy shower from then on, only to get viscerally pulled back into the moment where Root opens her eyes and looks up at her just as she’s about to tip over the edge.

Maybe because she knows it’ll cause a pool of heat to gather in Root’s center, or maybe because of all the little household messes Shaw’s beginning to associate with Root, Shaw’s never apologetic when her tense, focused grip on Root tightens to the point where she can see Root’s eyes beginning to water. Root never closes her eyes, though, and Shaw stubbornly holds her intense, watery gaze, until finally driven to the point where she can’t stand it anymore and screws her eyes shut and lets the reluctant _oh… fuck, I’m—_ rip right out of her.

It is sort of nice, though, Shaw thinks, when Root stands and lets Shaw slump against her in the aftermath, resting her forehead against Root’s collarbone for just a second.

 _Nice_ , she thinks with a snort of disgust, when her hands run down along Root’s sides to rest at her hips, and she lets Root bury her face into her hair with a deep inhale and a soft tousling at the back of her head, and they wait for Shaw to catch her breath.

Nice, she thinks appreciatively, when she lifts her forehead and doesn’t even need to say a word, because Root is already stepping back and out of the bathroom to leave her to shower in peace.

Maybe that’s why she catches Root’s hand by the fingertips and pulls her back in, curling her other hand around Root’s jaw. Maybe that’s how Root ends up standing there, nestled between Shaw’s legs, as Shaw sits on the sink counter still grasping one of Root’s hands and kissing her with an insistent tongue and playful bites.

Shaw doesn’t really know why.

So she keeps her eyes closed, because she knows Root’s watching her, and when the kiss slowly comes to an end, Shaw lets their breaths mingle for the slightest bit before letting go of Root’s hand and letting Root walk away again.

Shaw inhales through her nose, then exhales as she hops off the counter and turns to get back into the shower.

She pauses.

There’s a small heart drawn next to one of Shaw’s hand smudges on the mirror.

Shaw shakes her head. She gets back into the shower.

When she comes out, towelling her hair dry, Shaw’s unsurprised that Root’s nowhere to be found.

The only reminders that Root had ever even stepped foot into her apartment are the various mini-disasters distributed around, from the careless candy wrappers on the ground to the pillows that somehow managed to get tossed clear away from Shaw’s bed and into the living room the night before.

Shaw considers her steadily growing mental list of chores, as Shaw continues looking around her apartment and noticing the extensive list of catastrophes Root has left in her wake.

Well, at least Root will know where to find her for the rest of the day.


End file.
